Herausforderungen für den Journalismus über Wissenschaft in der Coronapandemie – erste Beobachtungen zu einem Weltereignis

The mass media has made the SARS-CoV‑2 virus a so-called global event. The volume and congruence of the journalistic selection of topics in Germany exceeds that of the already high level of the H1N1 pandemic 2009 many times over. In this discussion article, challenges for journalism that have arisen in reporting on the scientific aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic are described. At the beginning of the pandemic, there was a real epistemic uncertainty due to the lack of established facts. Many editorial offices lacked professional routines for the competent handling of preliminary research results and for the evaluation of scientific reputation of experts. Dealing with scientific articles that had not yet undergone peer review (preprints) became a major challenge. If peer review isn’t available, science journalists have to develop new indicators to assess the quality and relevance of a preprint research publication and they need to be better equipped to distinguish valuable scientific contributions from mere “hype.” The phenomena observed during pandemic reporting show how essential independent professional science journalism is for the democratic discourse, because only in this way can nonscientific audiences correctly classify truthful and relevant scientific content conveyed and develop informed trust in science.